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Forum Discussion
Re: Is there any benefit to have a wired backhaul for an Orbi Mesh system?
In my experience no! I’ve had an RBR750 and 5x RBS750s for a couple of years. Although for some of that time I’ve had pretty good Wi-Fi network, I’ve spent countless hours/days/weeks fiddling tryin...
In my experience it is a lot easier to make things worse than better. Especially when the actual problem hasn't been identified. And especially when the basic settings don't work. That's a red flag that something fundamental is likely a problem rather than something esoteric. When I see people starting to go down the path of CTS/RTS settings and grasping for the latest "CATx" spec cable, my sense is that it won't end well until the grasping at straws is over.
I appreciate that you had issues and that you have stabilized things, but "wired backhaul" as the culprit is probably a red herring and something else you did inadvertently settled things down.
For the 3 systems I have owned, RBR50, RBR850, and RBR960, wired backhaul has always been better. Not by a lot with the 960, but still better - even with my old 1996 installed CAT5 cables. And there's zero reason that "old house with some big thick walls, and lots of nooks and crannies" would make wired backhaul work worse than wireless. If anything, it would very likely be the opposite.
Wireless backhaul works well, but there is no reason wired backhaul shouldn't be better if it can be done. Just as a wired connection to any networked device is going to generally be better than WiFi. WiFi is for convenience, but the most robust performance will be wired given reasonably modern equipment.
JamesSimpson wrote:
In my experience no!
I’ve had an RBR750 and 5x RBS750s for a couple of years. Although for some of that time I’ve had pretty good Wi-Fi network, I’ve spent countless hours/days/weeks fiddling trying to improve connectivity problems. ...
A lot of this was made worse with a wired backhaul. I’ve tried every available settings and way of connecting them to try and improve things, including firmware updates, numerous different channels, CTS/RTS ratios, preamble settings, transmit powers, router and satellite placement, soft resets, factory resets with re-sync wireless, factory resets with re-sync wired then wireless, new Cat7 cables, gigabit switches in between, hub/spoke, daisy chain….. and my final conclusion is that the network is much better without any wired backhaul at all. With a wired backhaul I was consistently plagued by frequent disconnections, very slow re-connections, and patchy connection to other devices on my LAN. All or most of this disappeared when I sacked the ethernet backhaul. I live in quite an old house with some big thick walls, and lots of nooks and crannies which probably doesn’t help.
I’m sure in general you are correct, wired will usually be more robust than Wi-Fi, which is why I wanted to go down that road in the first place. All I know is that the end result for my network has been very clear. After a huge amount of time and troubleshooting (new cables, setting everything up from scratch etc), the network is significantly more stable with a wireless backhaul. Handoff when roaming between APs works much more smoothly and devices connect much more quickly. I’m not sure why, that’s just my experience. Perhaps I’m just unlucky!